January SNEAK PEEK! Rites of Passage

[dialecticdreamer]

Rites of Passage

Everyone is born, and eventually, everyone dies. These can be emotionally complex, difficult experiences, but they can also be the pivotal moment in someone else's life, too. The milestones which mark a path through life can be powerful, illuminating, funny, sad, terrible, warm, or comforting, and we want to read about them.

Here is a sample public card, chosen from a list of seventy-five possible rites of passage.

tying a necktie	choosing a gift	first legal signature	first word	getting a license
killing someone	first library card	first crush	wisdom teeth	first paycheck
first insult	death	???	carrying fire	first flirt
parenthood	school dance	first homemade meal	new disability	walkabout
first kiss	loss of parent(s)	marriage or handfasting	discovering your orientation	first residence

Feel free to use the sample public card or generate one of your own (instructions are in the introductory post on 1 January 2015). There are no minimum fills, no requirements for form, genre, or medium. PRIZES offered!

Comments

[vexed_wench]

Oh this looks fun. That is a nice looking card. I was wondering if the full prompt list is on the card maker?

Full list

[dialecticdreamer]

I have sent it to Magibrain, but I don't know if thon has had time to put it into the default options. The post on the first will include the full list at the bottom, making it easy to, in fact, delete all but the 24 prompts you know you want, LOL, which defeats the purpose OF making a bingo card, but I'm not going to police it.

The idea of including the list is to make it simpler for people with triggers to take those out without having to bring the matter up to, essentially, a stranger.

Re: Full list

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> I have sent it to Magibrain, but I don't know if thon has had time to put it into the default options. <<

It has not been added yet, but well, this is holiday season. If it's not up by January 2 maybe ask again then.

>> The post on the first will include the full list at the bottom, making it easy to, in fact, delete all but the 24 prompts you know you want, LOL, which defeats the purpose OF making a bingo card, but I'm not going to police it. <<

I've known people to take 24 things they wanted to write about, and just use the generator to randomize the order and then pick 5 in a row. Frex, this is super useful for certain characterization or worldbuilding exercises.

>> The idea of including the list is to make it simpler for people with triggers to take those out without having to bring the matter up to, essentially, a stranger. <<

That is very sensible. The whole generator is built like that. You can select a prompt list, or several, and then edit from there; or you can input your own from scratch. Having a comma-separated list of prompts means people can just paste them into the window, even if the list doesn't appear on the main menu.

Re: Full list

[dialecticdreamer]

Exactly why I didn't want to /intrude/ by making someone ask "could you not include--" because, well, that's not my business.

It's also why the January post requests that /cuts/ are used if posting to Allbingo. I ran into a few things that, because of my reading speed, were kind of like opening a door on someone changing clothes-- blink and you miss it, but you can't really UN-see it.

I'm not going to say that ONLY having 24 prompts is "cheating"-- but I wanted a robust list to make it FEEL like a different list every time it's generated, not just the same things in new orders. Play with as many or as few of the prompts as you like.

And a little reminder... I'm a believer in PRIZES for bingos1

Re: Full list

[ysabetwordsmith]

>> Exactly why I didn't want to /intrude/ by making someone ask "could you not include--" because, well, that's not my business. <<

Agreed. I've noticed that more fests are switching to opt-in as well as opt-out lists. They're batching prompts by subtopic so things like crackfic, AU, emotions, etc. If you don't want to clue your triggers then you can just pick several subtopics you like and go with those -- they usually have at least a dozen prompts each.

>> It's also why the January post requests that /cuts/ are used if posting to Allbingo. I ran into a few things that, because of my reading speed, were kind of like opening a door on someone changing clothes-- blink and you miss it, but you can't really UN-see it. <<

That's fair.

Facebook is taking a beating right now because of their poorly handled "your year in review" app, which not only appears without being requested but requires people to dig through in order to turn it off -- which has been traumatizing to several people who lost loved ones or had other tragedies.

>> I'm not going to say that ONLY having 24 prompts is "cheating"-- but I wanted a robust list to make it FEEL like a different list every time it's generated, not just the same things in new orders. Play with as many or as few of the prompts as you like. <<

Oh yeah, if you play more than one card, you definitely want as big a list as possible. I love custom lists because I've played so many fests by now that I'm getting repeats of popular prompts.

>> And a little reminder... I'm a believer in PRIZES for bingos1 <<

:D Oh yes, I am definitely going to make myself a card for this.

Re: Full list

[vexed_wench]

Oh that is nice. I love having new prompts lists to pick from.

Re: Full list

[dialecticdreamer]

Glad to be of service! It's only four days away!

[gehayi]

Is this a theme you're supposed to work on overall for whatever you do in the month of January? Or is it just one of many themes that you can choose?

Theme

[dialecticdreamer]

It's one option, just for the bingo card fills. Other lists have consistent themes; for example, "cotton candy bingo" specializes in lighthearted "fluff" stories.

Many people play two or more bingo cards simultaneously, for example, they might choose a particular square from a hurt/comfort card (there is a H/c bingo list) and a square from this card and combine prompts. Allbingo /allows/ this specifically, as long as you've directly answered a prompt on the card for each item. A bad example: a rite of passage "prom" plus the prompt "car trouble" from another list's bingo card, could be combined IF the action at the prom is intrinsic to the story/scene in the same way the car trouble is. The first line of the fill reads, "On the way to the prom, Joey's rattletrap Fiat left him stranded on the side of the road." Unless you /also/ talk about how he gets /to/ the prom (probably the resolution of the story I have in mind), you're not answering the "prom" prompt because its an incidental, throwaway bit setting the stage for the "car trouble" prompt. Clearer?

I'm hosting this one, hoping more people will give bingo cards a try even as a five-minute writing prompt to unstick the brain staring at a blank page. There will be much more information on the post on Jan 1; this was a preview to whet people's appetites.